SEO is a vital component to any online marketing strategy and choosing the right SEO agency is crucial. By choosing the wrong one, you may put your company’s website and reputation at risk. Unfortunately, some SEO agencies engage in black hat tactics, take short cuts for quick successes and violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Ultimately, this could lead to a huge drop in rankings and a plummet in revenue - we're looking at you eBay. It is extremely important to do your research to evaluate the pros and cons of each SEO agency. Here's a list of questions you should ask before signing any contract. Knowledge is power - the more you know the better!

If you’re thinking about starting an inbound marketing campaign, there’s some things you really should know…

1. You’re going to be involved.

There’s no way around it – inbound marketing means taking a hands-on approach to your marketing efforts. That doesn’t mean you’ll be doing all of the work, but inbound is not a “we’ll just contract it out and forget it” kind of deal. Much of your involvement will be upfront as your inbound marketing agency works with you to:

As an inbound marketing agency, one of the questions we’re asked most often is, “When can I expect to see an ROI on my investment in inbound marketing?”

As we talked about in “4 Key Factors That Impact Results”, the speed with which you see a return depends on your commitment level, the current state of your marketing and your budget. We’ve also shared “Why Inbound Marketing Takes 12 Months”, outlining the process and showing how inbound marketing must build results naturally over time.

In yesterday’s video from Google Webmaster Help, Matt Cutts replied to the following question:

Matt, Do the good guys still stand a chance? We're a small company that hired an SEO firm that we thought was legit, but destroyed our rankings w/ spam backlinks. We've tried everything but nothing helps. What can a company with good intentions do?

By the time a customer contacts a supplier, statistics show they’ve already completed at least 57% of their purchase decision. So before contacting an inbound marketing agency you might be wondering - is inbound marketing going to make my sales teams obsolete? Not at all.

How do agencies quote the cost of inbound marketing? Is it arbitrary – or a rough guess? One of the stickiest conversations to be had when debating an investment in inbound marketing is the price point. And while inbound marketing has been shown time and time again to yield a better ROI than other marketing options, questions about how the price of the service is determined are among the most asked.

They’re fair questions, too – there’s no shame to be had in wanting to know how the agency decides on the quoted cost.

What is Marketing Automation and how should you use it? With content marketing buzzwords on the rise, this has been a hot topic of conversation.

HubSpot came out with a step-by-step blog post on why and how you should use marketing automation to complement your efforts.

Even if you’re sold on inbound marketing, convincing your boss may not be so easy. Executives, directors and leadership have to make challenging decisions, especially when budget, resources and assets are at stake. It’s forgivable, then, that they may not be as ready to jump on board at a whim.

Making the case for inbound marketing shouldn’t keep you up at night, though. Here are 4 simple things to keep in mind as you work to get your boss on board with inbound.

If you’re one of those businesses who have been online for years, the growing popularity of inbound marketing has almost certainly caught your eye. And yet, when the quotes and estimates come back from potential partners, you may have found yourself a little surprised at the cost.

After all, SEO was relatively cheap– depending on where you were getting it from. And PPC allowed for tightly controlled budgets that could be altered at a moment’s notice if necessary.

If you’re debating an investment in inbound marketing or evaluating different vendors to help in the process, you may be wondering what your role in the process will look like.

After all, your business is central to everything that will go on; it’s your brand that’s being promoted and your products being sold.

When you invest in “inbound marketing”, what are you really investing in? And if you want to get going with inbound marketing, whether through an agency or on your own, what line items need to be a part of that budget?

Or, perhaps more simply, what does inbound marketing actually cost? Frustratingly, the answer is “it depends.”

Are agencies just buying time when they tell you that inbound marketing will take months – sometimes a year or more – to really prove itself? It may seem like it, especially if you’re used to other marketing methods that drive more instantaneous results – paid advertising, mail outs and billboards, for example.

When you’re itching to get going, being told that results may come slowly during the early stages of inbound marketing can be a discouraging message to hear. If this time lag isn’t a “safety net” or a result of incompetence, then why the long-term approach?

What’s involved in inbound marketing? What is the process, stage by stage?

If you’ve ever asked these questions, you’re not alone. So much is said about inbound marketing, but it’s not often enough we get down to the nitty-gritty about what’s actually done throughout the campaign. Though there may be dozens, if not hundreds of micro-tasks along the way, at its heart, inbound marketing consists of just five key steps:

Whether or not you need an inbound marketing agency isn’t all that difficult to ascertain – but it does mean a hard look in the mirror and some serious honesty surrounding whether or not you or your business can successfully manage the various components without hiring an agency.

Without question, one of the things businesses struggle with most is turning their offline activities into an online advantage. Part of what makes it tough is incorporating digital considerations into the rest of your planning.

Commercials, as content pieces, have evolved beyond the “buy now!” model and taken on the challenge of trying to appeal to the audience on an emotional, or even personal, level.

As you look to the future, are you allocating more budget to your SEO? If not, you should be.

SEO, at its core, has changed. What was once a primarily technical endeavor has morphed into something quite unlike the SEO of 2004.